Natasha Kirsch

Natasha Kirsch runs EPEC, an innovative nonprofit that provides job training and resources to help single parents raise their families out of poverty. EPEC’s signature program, The Grooming Project, teaches students dog grooming, an in-demand, well-paid profession.

Kirsch, who takes an entrepreneur’s approach to her organization, is constantly looking for ways to provide her students with not only the skills they need, but also the wrap-around social services that will bring stability to their lives.

To further expand the opportunities for graduates, the organization last year opened The Salon, in suburban Kansas City, where high-performing former students can learn to run a business, setting them up to potentially go out on their own. None of these plans, however, could have anticipated the disruptions brought by 2020, revealing that recent graduates were still vulnerable.

Q: What has 2020 meant for the plans you had in place for EPEC/The Grooming Project? How have you had to adapt, both in your programs, but your fundraising?

We went deep, not long, in 2020 with the pandemic. We were able to graduate fewer families from our program than planned this year due to shutdowns, spacing requirements, and quarantining.

We ended up spending a lot of resources and time on our graduates. Pre-pandemic, they were all placed in grooming jobs and were supporting their families off welfare. When their grooming salons shut down, they were in a very vulnerable spot.

Our students who were enrolled in the school were still receiving welfare supports, so the shutdown affected them less. We shifted more case management support and emergency funding to graduates and their families to keep them afloat. My biggest worry was that graduates would get discouraged and slide further back.

Q: Are Christine Banks and Lindsey Massoth (who we featured a year ago) still managing The Salon, or have you cycled in new managers? Have the extraordinary events of this year made learning the business challenging for your managers, or actually helpful to them?

Christine and Lindsey have graduated from our management program at the Lee’s Summit, Missouri, salon, completing their business plans, budgets, and presentations. Christine is now an employee at The Salon with a flexible schedule as she works hard to get a mobile grooming van and start her own mobile grooming business. She created a crowd funder and raised more than $7,000 and is working with AltCap to get a loan for the rest of the money needed for a grooming van.

Lindsey has decided to wait before opening her own business and is now the full time Salon manager in Lee’s Summit.

We have two more students in our program now with nearly completed business plans. Amanda dove right in and actually used the government check from the pandemic and her tax return to lease a grooming salon in Independence, which she opened in July this year. Ashley, our fourth student, switched her plans for a storefront to a mobile business plan, likely pandemic inspired.

The biggest lesson students learn in our program is to identify assumptions and do realistic business budgeting. Just because you can groom eight dogs a day does not mean that you will have eight dogs a day to groom. Now, throw in a 60-day shut down. The pandemic is a difficult lesson for any business owner, but it really drives home the question for a one-woman groomer. What will you do if you break your arm or get sick for two months? How will your business survive, or will you go under? The pandemic is a wake-up call, and it landed hard on our graduates with the plans in the works to open their own businesses. On the bright side, grooming was deemed “necessary” in Lee’s Summit.

Q: Given that the economic downturn is disproportionately impacting women of color, what are you witnessing in the needs of the women The Grooming Project serves?

I don’t have enough information to know how the pandemic is affecting our white students vs. Black students. I feel pretty confident that I know why COVID-19 is reaching the poor before the wealthy, or even middle class. Our students work in the service industries, and they do not have the choice of whether to work that day or not – they need the money to survive.

When our grooming school and other salons shut down, our students and graduates did not just sit at home and wait for this to pass, they pieced together part-time and low-paying jobs. They worked Instacart, DoorDash, and in the grocery stores, and were more exposed than they would have been in our grooming school.

I was shocked to see how much better our students handled the pandemic than friends of mine who got to stay home. They put on a brave face and just kept moving forward even though half of them have major health complications and are the only parent in their child’s life. I remember saying something to a co-worker, and he just responded with: “I’m not shocked. They are so resilient, COVID may not even make the list of ‘things to worry about’ for them.”

Q: What “new normals” – good or bad – do you see or anticipate coming out of this year?

I think we will likely have more board and committee meetings via Zoom or hybrid. The moment I can go back to physically having all our students in parenting and budgeting classes, I will. In-person is just so much more effective. We have started buying Chrome books for all of our families and I think that will become a forever thing.

Q: Has anything in the past year changed your mind on your view of the world?

I lost a little hope in humanity this year and realized how important strong and positive leadership is to me. Racism in our country is much (MUCH) bigger than I had imagined. We have a lot of work to do as humans to understand our thoughts and actions and how they affect others. I only know a glimmer of what my students and their children go through, and I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a parent of Black children.

One mom was telling me that her daughter in middle school has walked into the bathroom to find “go home N#####” written on the bathroom mirror. After my shock wore down, I asked her if she could move her to a better school. She said, “This IS the better school.”

Q: As we look for hope in the New Year, where do you see opportunities to rebuild society’s systems better?

I see hope in our donors and supporters right now. Strong and influential people in our community are coming out saying “help me understand what it is like for you” to try and understand racism. These community leaders are putting themselves in a vulnerable and humble position and have the networks and connections to make major change. I think it is natural to view the world from our own lens, but it is transformational to sit in a different seat.

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